Peary knew how to make the best of everything. The half year he was laid up by this accident was that of the Arctic night. For six months in the year--spring and summer--the sun in the Arctic regions can be seen moving in a complete circle up in the sky. In other parts of the world, what is called the sunset is just the turning away of one side of the earth from the sun; and sunrise is the whirling round of that side into the sunlight again. What is called night is the time when the sun is shining on the other side of the earth. But the sun moves north in spring and summer; so that during those seasons in the Arctic region it never sets, and there is daylight all the time. In the fall and winter the sun moves south, and then in the Arctic region it never rises. So there is night for six months. While nursing his broken leg during this Arctic night, Lieutenant Peary was by no means idle. He sent the _Kite_ thousands of miles back to the United States. He made friends with the Eskimos, his little fat, red-faced northern neighbors who lived in _igloos_, as they called their small dome-shaped houses built of blocks of ice. He learned all he could of their language and their ways. He found out how to hunt the reindeer, the musk-ox, and other big game of the north, and studied and trained the Eskimo dogs, which would draw his sledges the thousands of miles he must yet go to reach the Pole. At last, when his leg was entirely well, it was early spring, when the sun could be seen rising, shining a little while in the middle of the day, and setting just above the frozen plains and icebergs to the south of them. In May, when the sun was circling a little higher in the sky for several hours every day, Peary and a small party harnessed sixteen dogs to four sledges and started off on a camping trip towards the Farthest North. With one companion who was used to the life in cold northern countries, he climbed a mountain of ice nearly a mile high. These two heroes kept on alone, across bleak regions broken up by ice-cracks, called _crevasses_, hundreds of feet deep, over slippery hummocks or ice-mounds, through deep snowdrifts and fogs, in constant danger of precipices and pitfalls. On the Fourth of July, they reached a body of water which they named for the day, Independence Bay. Here they climbed an icy height which they called Navy Cliff. From here they beheld a splendid expanse of clear country stretching still farther away toward the north. It was now the Arctic midsummer. They were surprised to find flowers blooming in sheltered nooks and to hear the hum of bees and flies. There were birds also--snow-bunting and sandpiper--flitting and flying about. On the little patches of bright green that showed through the snows of ages, musk-oxen--which look like both sheep and buffalo--were grazing. Peary shot five of these to supply meat for men and dogs on the return journey of five hundred miles or more.